Battleground Stockton 2023 10th Anniversary Event

On Saturday I was among the hundreds to attend this year’s Battleground show, their 10th Anniversary and the best attended show to date, all organised by Leon and the Pendraken team. This year I’d offered to play in the Durham club’s Never Mind the Boathooks Game organised by Conrad. I have to say I was very impressed with the ships, which were all scratch built and/or heavily converted. The other games were all at least pretty good and some of course were excellent, often for different reasons. What follows is a mosh-mash of photos of many of the games, but due to a technical failure (phone ran out of charge, doh!) I missed some, and the ones I did get of Andy Copestake’s lovely Sikh Wars game were unusable, even by my very low benchmark, which is a bugger as it was very pretty. 

So, here they are in no order whatsoever, which I guess isn’t as important as actually getting some reasonable photos.

The Great Galley of Newcastle (under my command) getting stuck in after delivering a few withering arrow storms in the direction of the Frenchies and assorted Hanseatic pirates, er mean traders.

Now some photos of Dave Pengelly’s 1st Schleswig-Holstein War 1848, using an extensive privately commissioned range of miniatures which look great. Lots of lovely uniforms and weird contraptions, and more, even a train, so what wasn’t there to like. I like this little espignol gun.

Danish rocket launcher.

The train.

10mm battle of Nachod, one of the first engagements in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. 

WW1 Dogfights

One for the kids. Cosmic cakes. Don’t ask….

William III in Ireland.

Eylau, 1807. 

6mm Ancient Naval.

Cardboard Venice.

WSS game using Paper Soldiers.

Sorry, I had to…..

WW1 1918. Very impressive game from Grimsby.

More action on the high seas, well the Seine Estuary.

And more of Schleswig Holstein. I could feel an itch coming on somewhere. Oh dear….

The English flagship

Thus ended a great day out catching up with friends and acquaintances, some of whom I’d not seen for years, some I see almost every week but hopefully nobody whom I will never see again (So many references to getting old in our chats). It was also good to meet some new folks whom I hope will maybe even become visitors to the Burrow in the future. Bizarrely one of my new acquaintances lives 100 yards from our old house up t’dale in Westgate. (He moved in after we moved out).

The games as you can see were largely good, the trade was extensive and catered for most gamers’ tastes, so 10/10 for everything. Well done Leon! Technically apart from a bacon buttie I only bought some paints and MDF bases, except for a few Napoleonic Swedes and Spanish off Ian at Eagle Figures to make up a couple of incomplete units. I did collect several battalions of 28mm early Napoleonic Russians that I’d had painted having lost the will to spend more of my life painting dozens of men in greatcoats. What seemed like an easy job wasn’t. 

Thanks to John for picking me up in the morning and to the delightful surprise of my wife coming after lunch to make sure I was behaving myself (we live barely five mi items away from the venue). Gave me quite a shock when I just looked over my shoulder as my spidey senses started tingling and there she was, and had been for 10 minutes! Hope I’d not said anything I shouldn’t have!

Austerlitz at Durham next Saturday. In the meanwhile I have Russians to base up and my war room to tidy up.